Representation and Reality Alexie on Film

Alexie's experiences as a boy compare to those of Victor and Thomas each. It is as though Victor and Thomas are two alternate projections of Alexie's character: Victor represents the unhappy Indian, who is dissatisfied with the way his family and the people on the reservation conduct themselves (they drink too much); he wants to think of himself as a proud, warrior Indian. Thomas on the other hand is far more sympathetic to Victor's family and sees good points in Victor's dad. He also reminds Victor that their tribe was not a warrior tribe but rather a fishing people -- which is a humorous reminder because it completely takes the wind out of Victor's prideful sails and returns him for a moment back to earth. This is essentially the push and pull that Alexie identifies in his own self going to the movies to the see the "Indians" on screen played by white men, rooting for John Wayne in The Searchers to kill the Indians who dared make off with Natalie Wood to nuzzle for a bit like on the covers of the romance books. Alexie wishes he could be like those Indians on the romance book covers -- blue-eyed and nuzzling up against a beautiful white-skinned woman in throes of ecstasy (Alexie). Yet, Alexie also wants to be proud of being an Indian, which is ironic because he loathes the only real depiction of an actual Indian on screen he had every seen -- Tonto.

What Alexie reveals is that there are actually competing narratives within his own heart and head about what it means to be Indian. These competing narratives are represented by Victor and Thomas. Victor is like the angry and resentful side of Alexie, which wishes that Indians could be strong, noble, fierce, handsome and warrior-like, as they are depicted in the films. He lives in an idealistic mindset and is angered that the Indians in his real life do not measure up. It is not that he is embarrassed of being an Indian but rather that the Indian he is and the Indians he lives with do not match the ideal that he has envisioned. That is what makes him sad, angry and lost. He has to find himself -- the reality of himself -- and Thomas is the one to help him do that. Thomas represents the realistic side of Alexie -- the honest side, the finds humor in the cognitive dissonance and the consonance of voices and views in peoples' own hearts and minds and actions. He is there to help Victor realize that what is really needed is simply a healthy does of realism, humility and acceptance. Alexie demonstrates as much in his own writing as he struggles with the fact that he and his fellow tribe were so enamored of the white Indians on screen and so hateful towards the real Indian -- Tonto -- because he reflected them more accurately than the others. Alexie's admission is a humble statement of fact that he and the others really wanted to be the white hero and have the white woman.

Alexie's experiences thus compare to Victor's and Thomas's in the sense that they come from a place that is real, honest, yet somewhat confused and nonsensical, while at the same time quite sensible and revealing and even thoughtful and intelligent. The honesty, acerbity, wit, humor, hostility and gentleness that Alexie interweaves in his writing is seen in the characters of Victor and Thomas, as they essentially do battle with the imaginary and the real in their attempt to come to terms and accept who are what they are and what that means. They are all -- all three of them -- coming of age in this respect, but it is not a process that is achieved quickly. Indeed, Alexie gives the impression that he is still attempting to come of age, even as he writes of his hatred of Tonto. The humor that he uses is based on a kind of reluctant irony: Alexie knows he is being ridiculous and that is why goes ahead admits it -- it is funny, honest, poignant and reflective of what everyone goes through when he or she is clumsily looking for an identity or looking to shape the one they have.

The power of representation is a real force to be reckoned with primarily because it allows one to project onto a screen or onto a page an idea. That idea goes from being mental or intangible to being tangible -- seen, felt, heard, possessed. The representation becomes in a way more real than the subject being represented. The Indians, for instance, actually existed and did battle with white men -- they did fight with Custer. But that reality was less real for Alexie than the representations of Indians on screen battling Custer in the movies. Alexie was shaped more deeply by those representations than by any historical or actual/factual account of those battles. Had he been exposed to a more realistic account, a more realistic representation, he might have been effected differently: then again he might have been repulsed in the same manner as he was repulsed by Tonto. Then again perhaps it was the context in which Tonto was represented (handmaid to the Lone Ranger -- the on-screen hero) that made Alexie dislike him so.

In any event, representations have the power to inform and to tell us who and what we are -- and this is why it is important to make those representations as authentic as possible. Those representations are essentially a perspective onto the mind and heart: they act as a mirror of what is inside the creator of the representation as well as a reflection of what the audience consists of. Hamlet stated that art acts as a mirror (Shakespeare) and by that he meant that through artistic representation we learn about who and what we are. Hamlet went on to say that this is why it was so crucial that the artist take his job very seriously because ultimately he is responsible for getting it right -- for informing the audience about the true nature of themselves. Because so many artists fail to take Hamlet's (or rather Shakespeare's) advice and just put up on screen what they know to be popular as opposed to what would be true and really reflective of reality, people like Alexie are basically misinformed about themselves growing up. This is what happens to Victor, so it can be surmised -- and Thomas is like the mature side of Alexie saying, "Hey, wait a minute -- this is not reality," and helping Victor to see that what he has been shaped by is not an altogether accurate representation of the facts. In fact, Thomas impresses Victor to accept the actuality of his existence and to be okay with that -- because in acceptance is humility, understanding, wisdom, and the potential for real growth, which is what Victor needs.

One senses that Alexie desires this as well in his article against Tonto -- that the article itself is like a cathartic exercise, designed to cleanse Alexie of his own self-loathing through humor, admission, and humility. By pointing out how he despised Tonto because he resembled him on the screen and showed him that he differed from the white heroes, he is able to better come to terms with his own sense of self -- even if it does not resolve in a kind of total acceptance. The reader senses that Alexie still likes to think of himself as the strong, romantic, chiseled hero depicted by the white actors -- and who can blame him? They represent the ideal of masculinity, and the issue of race is not really so much the point (even though it is still the point). Virility and manliness are really part of the issue here too -- how these qualities are represented, how they are shown -- that is what Alexie is coming to terms with too. Had Tonto been an Indian on screen who represented the same qualities as The Lone Ranger, Alexie may have liked him more. He and his tribe were not looking for a reflection of themselves in the physical sense (that was there, true, and they tried to convince themselves that Burt Reynolds had some Indian in him, which is why he fit the part) so much as they were looking for masculine forms to admire and emulate. This is really what Victor is looking for too. He finds it nowhere around him because he is looking for the wrong qualities. He is looking for scripted heroism, chiseled jaws, fawning women (in the throes of passion) and finding only Indians addicted to drink.

But as Thomas points out, there are good qualities and manly qualities about Victor's father. He is not as bad as Victor thinks he is. He is a human being. He is more than an image reflected on a screen -- and that is something that Victor has to come to grips with. Human reality is far more complex than the reality represented in a work of art. The work of art attempts to distill the reality and represent the essence (when it is doing its job, according to Shakespeare). When it is simply attempting to please the ego and rile the passions, it resorts to tricks and charades -- the kind that Alexie and his tribe are used to going to see when they go to the movies.

In conclusion, Alexie, Victor and Thomas are like the three parts of the human psychology -- the Id, the Ego and the Superego. They are each having a voice in the mind of the person, some shouting more than others, some coming up unconsciously -- but they are all there together, each a part of the whole. They are all attempting to grapple with reality and with themselves, to identify themselves and others, and to come to terms with the ideas they have in the heads and how those ideas got there. It is what growing up is about, and it is also about what becoming a man is about. Alexie's short story about hating Tonto is more reflective of a universal reality and a far greater truth than the films about Custer defeating the bad Indians.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. "I Hated Tonto (Still Do)." Los Angeles Times, 1998.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Web. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html